Should I keep going or should I just accept it?

Hi All,

I've been tweaking/testing like everyone else here on and off over the last 6 months or so. I know I've read many posts around the forums that describe this but I think it's finally clicked for me last night as to why I can't achieve reasonable frame rates constantly in the game (and I don't think that any more tweaking of my system is going to have any effect).

My System:

Windows 7 64bit

Core i5 2500k (OC'd to 4.4GHz)

16GB RAM (using an 8GB RAM disk for some of the PBO's).

ATI HD6970 (Have 2 of these but pulled one out as I was getting worse fps with it enabled - possibly underpowered psu but haven't confirmed this yet).

I'm playing the game at the 'Very High' setting (haven't touched advanced - so normal textures, normal terrain, high objects, 88% 3D resolution etc.) The game looks ok, it's a bit blurry at 88% 3D resolution but at least I'm getting a good frame rate (60+) when nothing is happening.

Last night I was playing the first mission of Operation Arrowhead where you take over the air field.

I've always thought that my GPU was struggling with certain scenes/objects in the game and that was why my fps was dropping so dramatically. Last night I enabled GPU Usage % in MSI Afterburner OSD while I was playing and noticed that when it's running at 70-100% GPU Usage, I'm getting great frame rates (45-60+). As soon as a fire fight breaks out it plummets and sits at anywhere from 20-40% Usage resulting in a much lower frame rate of 15-25.

Looking at my CPU Usage while this is happening, 1 Core is going flat out, while the other 3 cores are hovering at about 30-40% utilization. I thought I read somewhere that the AI and rendering are processing on the same core on the CPU. If so this would explain what I am seeing - as soon as AI starts to increase and things start happening, GPU usage drops off. If this is what is happening it seems to me that the there is nothing I can do about it unless I could somehow overclock my CPU (10GHZ? :p)

My question to everyone is:

Do you think it's possible to achieve a reasonable frame rate (35-40+) during fire fights on my current hardware and not by lowering the video settings any further or am I just wasting my time (It seems to me that it's not possible :confused:)? Has anyone achieved this and if so, what are your specs?

I haven't found any game that comes close to ARMA 2, I've tried playing others but always end up coming back. Damn you ARMA 2, you've ruined me for other games! :mad:

whats your HDD ? Arma has insane texture streaming. i got like +100% smoothness when i switched from HDD to SSD. and if texture cant be streamed, well then GPU is of course not at full load and everything starts to choppy.

but since you mention firefights there might be another issue (particle ?), i dont know. watch your HDD load ?

whats your view distance how many meters btw ?

the only thing i can tell you: its unlikely/impossible that the PSU is responsible for FPS drop PSU is either is good, or the computer shuts down or crashes or does other weird things, but not just decreased FPS

do yu have a good (confirmed by others) CrossfireX application profile for ArmA2 ?

you NEED a working application profile or CFX will not work or even make things worse, as you noticed !

I've got a standard spinning drive not SSD that's why I'm using the 8GB RAM disk.

View Distance is currently 3600 (Default when you select 'Very High'). I did play around with this - lowering it to as low as 800 but GPU load was still low during fire fights.

In this case PSU is not an issue because I have only one GPU in the system currently (not running Crossfire).

Are others seeing a fully loaded GPU during fire fights?

srry didnt knoiw what "RAM disk" was ^.~

yes in my opion you can PSU rule out totally, also for Crossfire, because as i said either it works, or it crashes or turns off, but insufficient PSU does not only decrease FPS, this is impossibel in my eye

i just checked its generally at 90 to 100 % also in fire fight with me. it just slightly drops to about 70 when theres really a lot of trouble on screen (artillery bombs and chopter crashes and so), then also FPS dropes, and it also drop a little when i zoom scope (to about 80) but then there no FPS drop i notice. on the other hand, i never have muich FPS generally (around 30-40 mostly, down to 20 in special situations sometimes, generally i have better fps in Takistan then in Chernaruss) i have max settings, except AA, and 6000 view distance

( i have the same CPU and same OC as you, but only 6870 gpucard)

i hope youre not using the ugly 12.1 shit "preview" drivers or ? they suck very big!!! if use them make back to 11.12 ^^

whats your mother board ? using the primay PCIe slot yes ?

have disabled lucid virtu if you have Z68 board? (this makes many problems on my machine)

have maybe tried disable Anti Aliasing ? have AA setting in driver on "application controlled" ?

maybe also disable VSync ?

oh and i think there is some issue with post processing and shadows too maybe play around withj these two, better disable both for testing purposse

Edited January 20, 2012 by deszythe

When I get out of the chopper in the first mission for Operation Arrowhead (the one where you take over the airfield) my GPU usage for the first half of that mission won't go above 50%... :(

Haven't tried using 12.1 preview - using 11.12 currently.

Yep, using the primary PCIe Slot (Gigabyte P67 motherboard, don't have the exact model number at the moment).

Have tried disabling AA and this does result in a slightly higher FPS but this is because the GPU has less to do not because its load has increased any.

Played with VSync on/off last night - no effect to GPU load.

I'll have a play around with shadows and PP to see if it has any effect (though I think with PP it will be the same - turning it off will give the GPU less to do so I will get a slightly higher FPS but no extra load on the GPU which is what I need).

Have you try to run the game using default factory setting for your hardware? You said that your cpu was overclocked... try not OC it. I once tried to OC my GPU, instead of an fps boost, I got a bad lock-up/stuttering instead, though I admit I'm not good at OCing.

So for now, try that first, and see how it goes.

Have you try to run the game using default factory setting for your hardware? You said that your cpu was overclocked... try not OC it. I once tried to OC my GPU, instead of an fps boost, I got a bad lock-up/stuttering instead, though I admit I'm not good at OCing.

So for now, try that first, and see how it goes.

At this point I am open to any suggestions, so I will give it a try and see if it helps.

First off turn off FRAPS.

Ok you wont do that yet, then we need to know,

1. Display Resolution

2. CCC settings.

3. Version of the Game, Beta

4. Tried non Bis missions?

1. 1920x1080 but as I mentioned running 3D resolution at 88%

2. Reset to Default settings (I think they are mostly application controled).

3. Running latest official patch 1.6 (Haven't tried latest Beta).

4. At this point just testing on that BIS mission because it has a fairly decent number of AI at the start (and it's fun! :D).

---------- Post added at 12:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:14 PM ----------

i just checked its generally at 90 to 100 % also in fire fight with me. it just slightly drops to about 70 when theres really a lot of trouble on screen (artillery bombs and chopter crashes and so), then also FPS dropes, and it also drop a little when i zoom scope (to about 80) but then there no FPS drop i notice.

deszythe this does give me hope - when you say it slightly drops to 70%, is this on the same mission I mentioned? Can you test that mission for me?

You and I have literally identical system specs atm, even up to the OC'd CPU. I run everything max, including FXAA and the FXAA sharpening filter, but minus traditional AA. I also run Oktane's NoBlur Mod. 3D and screen rez at native 1650x1080. View distance usually at 5k. And roughly minus 5-8 frames for every 1k distance after. With these settings, even in massive firefights, I never have FPS issues. I usually run a constant 60-70, and it usually drops to around 45 in heavy particle or heavy AI situations.

One thing we don't know yet is your memory frequency. Memory bandwidth can be a huge variable in situations of low performance when neither CPU nor GPU are being fully utilized. For instance, I run my Memory at 1,920Mhz, OCd. That's the only disparity that I could possibly see between our systems.

You and I have literally identical system specs atm, even up to the OC'd CPU. I run everything max, including FXAA and the FXAA sharpening filter, but minus traditional AA. I also run Oktane's NoBlur Mod. 3D and screen rez at native 1650x1080. View distance usually at 5k. And roughly minus 5-8 frames for every 1k distance after. With these settings, even in massive firefights, I never have FPS issues. I usually run a constant 60-70, and it usually drops to around 45 in heavy particle or heavy AI situations.

I do like hearing things like this! Maybe things aren't so hopeless after all.

What is FXAA sharpening filter? I have maxed FXAA in ARMA ini file.

Would the blur be an issue as I can reproduce without moving my head (staring at a fixed point)?

My memory could be a problem, (PC-10600 1333MHZ DDR3 not OC'd) but could it really account for such a large dip in performance and under utilization of the GPU?

The sharpening filter is a "new" FXAA feature provided in the latest beta build. Give it a try, it really makes textures look a ton better. Also keep in mind that with FXAA, in terms of performance and quality, higher numbers and performance loss doesn't always translate into better image quality. For instance, at the max setting, there is no dithering and the most performance loss. But dithering is an important technique in AA and IQ in general that can more effectively remove jaggies.

The blur issue is more of a personal preference issue, but removing the blur filter does increase framerates. http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=97853&highlight=noBlur

And, for the memory, I'm really not sure. There aren't alot of reliable benchmark data sources for Arma 2. But in the case of other games, it's hit and miss. Some games see no difference at all in memory bandwidth increases. Others can see up to 25-30 FPS increases, depending on the system balance. Memory bandwidth is an important figure, to be sure. But it's often an unreliable mark in terms of performance. The only real way to find out is to try OCing your memory. Keep in mind that reliable overclocks on ram is much more difficult than CPU overclocks, simply because there are so many more variables to be considered, including timings, manufacturers, the specific memory chips used, and how much voltage said chips can handle without suffering damage.

If you are to use shader-based AA you can ditch FXAA and use much superior SMAA (currently available as injector - until BIS will implement it) instead.

FXAA blur the image way too much, while SMAA looks like MSAA 8x (save for small details like wires which can be seen better only with usual antialiasing methods) without blurring the image. Injector blurs the text though, but when BIS implements SMAA - the issue will not be there anymore.

As for performance - I'm 100% sure it's because of AToC. By default it's still on and the only way to turn it off is through config. Look for ArmA2OA.cfg in My Documents\ArmA 2

Then find a string AToC=7. Set it to 0 to turn it off completely. You may easily have 50%+ more FPS that way.

What's AToC? It's Alpha-To-Coverage. Basically it smoothes texture edges where transparency is and makes textures on trees and grass look softer and smoother with more detail. But at a very large performance hit. More info about AToC values here:

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/arma2.cfg

1333 Mhz DDR3 should be more than enough ! overclocking RAM is not bringing much performance on Sandy Bridge (a littel though... not much)

the problem source is probably not hardware related though, i cannot say fully ! have you latest BIOS ? can you check with GPU-z if your GPU is fully powered with at lest 8x PCIe and has the bandwith it needs ?

how about other games ? benchmarks ?

so if other games etc run sufficient and GPU is used fully then the problem is PROBABLY software-related or driver related.

sometimes AMD drivers install shitty, without any apparent reason, happened to me a lot of times already wwhere i reinstalled the driver and had a huge FPS boost in any game, maybe try that too

maybe also try a different MEmory Allocator ?

play around with RenderFrames Ahead in the graphic driver or wht its called may help too, it helped me to resolve a similiar issue (low GPU usage, low FPS) in Skyrim

@theCapulet: you have 6970 or 6870 ??

EDIT: HAVE Another idea: is it possibel that you load the CAP (crossfire Application Profile) you would use for dual GPU also for single GPU ? it MAYBE causes your game to only partially use the GPU on the singel card ?

actully first thing i would do is to de-install Graphic drivers and re-install them

Edited January 20, 2012 by deszythe

There are a lot of things wrong with this post, so I'll go through them systematically.

1333 Mhz DDR3 should be more than enough ! overclocking RAM is not bringing much performance on Sandy Bridge (a littel though... not much)

This depends entirely on the game played and the hardware used. Like I mentioned in my original post to the OP, we have identical specs, barring memory. In my case, going from 1333Mhz to 1900Mhz+ has resulted in pretty decent performance increases in some games. Most Notably, Dirt3 saw a 24 FPS avg increase. That was my biggest FPS increase just from the OC, but not the only one. Unfortunately, I never bothered testing Arma 2 in that regard, and CBA to go back and reset the OC just to test it, since my current OC is rock solid and I don't want to risk not being able to reach it again. (Which was a common problem my last rig)

the problem source is probably not hardware related though, i cannot say fully ! have you latest BIOS ? can you check with GPU-z if your GPU is fully powered with at lest 8x PCIe and has the bandwith it needs ?

Bios almost never has anything to do with performance. If his game is running, and other games run well, his bios version is fine. If he's using the 2xxxK series Intel processors, his first graphics slot will ALWAYS be x16. And PCI bandwidth speed is exactly that. They aren't two different things.

how about other games ? benchmarks ?

We can assume other games run fine, otherwise he wouldn't have an issue with this game, as he'd understand something is wrong in the grander scheme of things.

so if other games etc run sufficient and GPU is used fully then the problem is PROBABLY software-related or driver related.

Arma 2 is notable for not utilizing the GPU fully in many situations. While I'm not discounting that this may be a driver issue, it's unlikely. Specially since the OP's attention has already focused on that facet.

sometimes AMD drivers install shitty, without any apparent reason, happened to me a lot of times already wwhere i reinstalled the driver and had a huge FPS boost in any game, maybe try that too

AMD drivers install exactly the same. The installation code doesn't have a mind of it's own. The only variables in driver installation that could change are installing modded drivers that have older files that wouldn't overwrite newer files from a previously installed driver.

play around with RenderFrames Ahead in the graphic driver or wht its called may help too, it helped me to resolve a similiar issue (low GPU usage, low FPS) in Skyrim

Render Frames Ahead is only relevant in crossfire performance, and so has nothing to do with this topic.

@theCapulet: you have 6970 or 6870 ??

I have both. But in my primary machine, the 6970.

EDIT: HAVE Another idea: is it possibel that you load the CAP (crossfire Application Profile) you would use for dual GPU also for single GPU ? it MAYBE causes your game to only partially use the GPU on the singel card ?

That's not the way crossfire profiles work. GPU drivers don't "split" the workload in half and divey it out to each GPU. And profiles aren't loaded when crossfire isn't in use.

actully first thing i would do is to de-install Graphic drivers and re-install them

He's using the latest officially released Driver. Reinstalling it will only waste time, as "de-installing" via AMD's uninstaller interface doesn't actually remove a lot of the files, and so wouldn't be overwritten on reinstall anyways.

---------- Post added at 04:08 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:00 AM ----------

If you are to use shader-based AA you can ditch FXAA and use much superior SMAA (currently available as injector - until BIS will implement it) instead.

Is it confirmed that they're going to? I can't wait. :D

As for performance - I'm 100% sure it's because of AToC.

AToC, as implemented in this game, is godawful ugly anyways. Everyone should turn that trash off by default. lol.

Edited January 20, 2012 by TheCapulet

Actually AToC looks good when it comes to grass and Takistani trees.

Chernarussian trees - not so much.

Although I've seen that AToC looks strange on other machines. F.e. on mine it looks more natural - basically just more branches, leaves and stuff - while f.e. in Kenwort's videos he has waterpaint trees and waterpaint bushes. Looks really awful indeed.

Yeah. The waterpaint effect is what I get as well. : \ Wish it worked better.

@rob151515: Capulet has already said much of this but try these tried and tested tweaks.

thecapulet i may have gotten one or two details wrong with multi GPU or in english, but youre getting more wrong than right now

1. believe me or not AMD drivers, when u install the driver suite with CCC, it CAN install shitty from time to time, may have something to do with virus protection or just shitty code or broken driver files on a hosting-mirror, have you written the CCC or read the sourcecode or why are you so sure it always installs fine on every machine in the world and how you explain google the many results where driver reinstall helped even its official troubleshooting suggestion from AMD!! rmeoval of driver can be done with driverCleaner in safemod ofc but i never found it a necessisity since Win7 (was different back in XP), just overwrite is fine

2. regarding BIOS update the idea is that ther maybe is bandwidth missing on the PCI-e slot, which can well be a reason of GPU not fully stressed in game, i think there was a bug in the release BIOS of an ASUS P67 or MSI board dunno wchich where it only gave 4x PCIe on the primary slot. of course its a rather exotic reason mostly its CPU bottleneck but that had been ruled out now (reduce resolution and view distance to minimum!), and of course the effective bandwith is NOT equal to only the way the PCIe slot is electrically bound, it also has to be support by chipset... and of corse effective bandwith its also to the bus of NB or respecivley BCLK!! there aer totally differnt!!

3. RenderFramesAhead is also one of teh most often successfully used vgadrivers tweaks in both Singel and multi GPU systems on the Bethesda-Engine RPGs, of course i dont know if tis in ARMA has the case but its definately not a multiGPU only parameter

im not writing things out of my stomach but from my experience in building systems and fixing them.

just a sec you say you gain plus 24 fps averaged-over-time (u mean not only for a few seconds in specific game situation or where its loading new textures or objects right??) in a game by overlcocking DRAM on sb from stock to 1900mhz swith other wise 1000% identicall settings system and gamewise ? i have trouble beliving this seriously u mean 2.4 fps ?!! even that is very much for RAM OC, especially on a sandy bridge platform, normally i doesnt have no significant impact on games and i dont know a single review or "official" benchmark result which would result in such a devastating gain of performance from RAM-OC. normally it looks like this:

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=616&Itemid=99999999&limit=1&limitstart=7

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=210&Itemid=99999999&limit=1&limitstart=6

if thats true you might have discovered some serious trick :D should dirt3 become a reference benchmark for comparing RAM haha. i mean seriously !! although i have a certain feeling it sounds more like one of kotovs motherboard stories

Edited January 20, 2012 by deszythe

As for performance - I'm 100% sure it's because of AToC. By default it's still on and the only way to turn it off is through config. Look for ArmA2OA.cfg in My Documents\ArmA 2

Then find a string AToC=7. Set it to 0 to turn it off completely. You may easily have 50%+ more FPS that way.

Thanks unfortunately it wasn't AToC. Switching it off had no effect on the issue I'm seeing.

thecapulet i may have gotten one or two details wrong with multi GPU or in english, but youre getting more wrong than right now

1. Yes. In fact, I have. The driver installation code is unrestricted, and I can absolutely confirm that how I stated it is exactly how it works. At one point, I had played around with the idea of modding my own drivers to fix a few issues I had with a couple games. But since then, better modded drivers have come out, saving me the hassle. So when I say, "No, it doesn't work that way," I mean it. Any other results should be considered a placebo effect. (When I worked in IT, "reinstall your drivers/restart your PC" was always my first suggestion. Not because it worked, but because it got people off my balls when I was busy. And in many cases, it led to said placebo effect.)

2. Since we already know that this is a 2x00K series processor, we know that 1. the BCLK has no variance, since it is extremely limited this generation. 2. That he uses the 6x generation of Intel motherboards, which means he is using PCIe 2.1 support. And that means he gets 5gt and 500MB per lane throughput. And in the case of a motherboard limiting to x4 lanes, you'll have to provide sources. Because it defies logic, as the P67 were flagship enthusiast boards when released, and so the manufacturer would have never damaged their rep so bad as to let it pass through. And 2, after multiple internet searches, combined with the fact that I follow enthusiast technology pretty closely, there's absolutely no evidence of any P67 board having this issue.

3. Max frames to render ahead isn't a performance tweak. In the case of gamebryo engine games, that engine has long since had DirectInput issues that conflict with modern GPU drivers, specially when SLI and Xfire is used. In it's case, you edited the maxframestoreder setting to LOWER the game performance, and thereby removing the mouse lag. The same principal follows with other games. But issues with input lag usually only happen with 2 or more graphics cards. And the gamebryo engine is one of the very rare exceptions. In this case, the OP doesn't want less performance, he wants more.

And I'm not writing these things in haste, but from 10 years of hobby and 6 years of career experience in the IT field, part of which includes system building, system balancing, and extreme overclocking. (My first job was building specialty systems for a local PC shop. Those were always fun.) I may have moved on to a different career (And way sweeter. lol. IT really does suck!), but I still spend decidedly too much time (and money) keeping up with enthusiast technology trends.

And yes, I do mean 24 fps increase in Dirt3. For that game specifically, I actually think TomsHardware has some ram benchmarks that can confirm my findings. Some games, when run at absolute max settings, do in fact have a ram thoroughput limited environment. Ram bandwidth does make a significant impact in certain situations.

Edited January 20, 2012 by TheCapulet

Yeah I have the same issue, low GPU usage.. vote up the ticket in my Info box, I have a GTX 470 btw

I have the same problem.

I can put 100 inactive AI in a forest and run at mid - high and get about 40 FPS average.

The second AI actually does something it goes to 15 - 20.

^^ Vote up the ticket

This is for AMD users:

Try these modded drivers. Follow directions carefully, because current driver files MUST be deleted properly for the new driver files to write to disk on installation.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=322616